Photo by Marjan Blan | @marjanblan on Unsplash
by framersqool:
I'm not even willing to pollute my writing by spelling out the previous (R) US president's last name; the man is that repulsive and unforgivable a figure in my eyes.
And as is my nature, my reasons for this sentiment have precisely zilch to do with my being the (D)-word instead. You know what that one means, it's the opposite of the (R)-word in American life, and I am emphatically not one of those either. Nor will I be stamped with the (L)-word, before you even go there.
None of these labels has any genuine meaning in the least, other than as factional markers for individuals to use in parting company with their own autonomy as individuals, and to instead hide behind flimsy gestures of 'support', a term which has (like so many) been rendered entirely meaningless in recent times, by way of its being continually used without it really meaning anything at all: support Ukraine, support abortion, support traditional values, support free and fair elections, support Greta Thunberg, support colonizing Mars, support the New York Yankees.... et cetera.
None of this type of lazy, passive, self-congratulatory dropping of ideological cues 'supports' anything of substance in the least.
If one is not literally placing oneself at direct risk and investing continual effort into helping something one believes in become real or be preserved as valuable, the term 'to support' is little more than chest-pounding arrogance of no genuine value.
I even have trouble using the term 'conservative' to describe my beliefs regarding politics, policy, and governance.
Yes, I do believe in limited government, but to such an apparently radical extent that my beliefs hold that every edifice of governance must be under continual, unforgiving, and even hostile scrutiny by an aggressively incredulous citizenry and continually forced to explain its actions down to the last paper clip under a microscopic focus of its being the most liable of all entities to the rule of law, or else it ought to be forced out of existence to make room for those who would govern responsibly and accountably in its stead, and if none such can be found, that we ought to just damn well govern ourselves as we were designed and intended as human beings to do, and end this too-long-endured foolishness of corrupt and duplicitous regimes acting exclusively in their own interests, which they all do and always have done without any exceptions, once and for all.
Not exactly the definition of 'limited government' one might find in (R)-word propaganda, is it?
Not even the (L)-word folks, all three and a half dozen of them hold such absolute and non-negotiable views toward government as described above.
Go ahead and call me the A-word if such labels need be applied.
(There are actually a few of those, help yourself....)
But of all the basically insincere and rarely consistent labels Americans stick on themselves in such hopelessly hypocritical affairs as tolerating the existence of government apparently requires, I suppose the one that most closely aligns with my own views is, yes, conservative.
Not as a political philosophy or a packaged set of ready-made lying points for the attraction of votes and donations, but as a way of life.
Remember those? They actually matter in the scheme of things a whole lot more than politics or governing styles ever have. One's way of life has always been worth fighting for and risking all to preserve, while nothing to do with either politics or governance ever has.
And so, if being conservative has to do with my essential values, and what I will put at risk to have them upheld, and if living in a reputedly conservative community and doing my best to coexist with its values and ways must be regarded as (sigh....) my 'support' for conserva-tism, the entire Donald Stain experience leaves me astonished and appalled, that any of the fine people I am honored to regard as neighbors and know they regard me as the same, ever fell for a blustering con man from Queens and his nakedly counterfeit allegiance to anything even close to what I happen to know these fine folks believe in and would be willing to 'support' with their votes.
I mean, seriously, just look at the guy.
Not an easy ask, I know. But do have a hard look at the man himself, at long last.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
The most severe harm he has done, with the full and knowing complicity of those who so self-abusingly have 'supported' him while his entire persona and schtick have been so comically fallacious for the entirety of his whimsical foray into American politics as a personal adventure in grifterism with the highest possible stakes, is that now, in the eyes of the entire world as well as the American electorate and body politic, both the (R) Party he so effortlessly duped and hijacked, and the entire notion of an American conservative way of life, have been reduced, in his name, to a punchline.
And one that brings the laughs, every time it is punched.
And well-deserved ones.
Because, I mean seriously already, a lifelong big-government liberal and permanent crony to the most powerful big-government factions in all American life, just up and decided one year that it might be fun to pull a Big Con on the other side of the aisle, by pretending, not even all that convincingly, to be one of them.
And the punchline is...... that they fell for it.
A longtime Clintonian insider was asked to rig an election for a crazy cat lady who was obsessed with being The First Woman President her whole life, who'd even had people already calling her that for thirty years, before not being elected to the post because the family's fixer whose mission had been to divide the other party against itself decided, instead, that it might be fun to sit in that oval office himself for a while.
Pretending to be a conservative, and having the entire political right washing his feet in kowtowing obeisance while the left spent those same years going quite entertainingly berserk at the very thought of his existence.... yes, this must have been great fun for the most spectacularly successful grifter in the history of the art form.
The question for genuinely conservative individuals, if any such even exist who have not been long co-opted into the lucrative scheme of leveraging government for every favor and advantage and tax shelter and contract to be had from it, and the bigger the regime the better for the purpose, the question now is whether the catastrophic damage to true conservatism will ever recover, or whether instead, the very notion of conservatism as a way of life will remain forever, in the eyes of the whole world, a reliable punchline.
It already is.
It must be doubly embarrassing for the (R)-words of the nation, for the joke not only to have been on you the whole time that fat clown has been playing you, but worse still, for the joke to BE you, from now on.
So if anyone still wonders why the American body politic is now sliding further and further leftward, with no indications in sight that this regime will do anything but become more powerful and invasive and corrupt and reckless, conservatives who ever fell for that Big Con need only look at themselves in the mirror.
Because to discredit you, and humiliate you, and make it epochally unlikely for you to ever be anything but a joke to the entire world thereafter, had been the intent behind smearing America with The Donald Stain all along.
And God help your way of life once you'd sold it off to a hustler who's been laughing at you the whole time.
framersqool
framersqool is an aging bachelor of no particular consequence. He is in command of more opinions than facts (but occasionally the facts, or the lack thereof) and can make a thing seem worth writing about.
The Donald Stain
I liked his original premise about Americans insisting on being identified with a political label, as meaningless as most of them have become. But he loses me with some of his subsequent conclusions. Those stereotypes may be stupid, but they are not at all the same. It’s a lazy analysis to say all philosophies are corrupt and therefore the same. And to insist that Trump is a “liberal,” a term he has already said has no meaning, is missing the biggest thing about Trump. Conmen don’t support political philosophies. He’s an opportunist. He’s the easiest person of all to analyze, being so unfathomably stupid that there’s little left to figure out. And no, traditional conservatism will not come back. The GOP is dead and MAGA is still winning political power, and those folks are so convinced they’re right about everything, that they couldn’t care less whether they are a punchline or not.
Another dime-a-dozen rant against Trump, the person, that fails to critique even a single one of his actual policies, many of which were quite sound and precisely what America needs, then as now.
I’ve read this guy’s stuff on your blog before, and he’s been half decent, but this is just TDS-spew of the laziest variety. You can do a lot better.